But when at your behests I die,
Like the Fury of the Night will I
From Hades come, a phantom sprite—
Such is the Manes’ awful might.”
The Roman poet Vergil (70 B.C.–19 B.C.) depicts, in one of his pastoral Eclogues, a love episode that involves magic rites for the purpose of winning the love of Daphnis:
Scarce had night’s cold shade parted from the sky, just at the time that the dew on the tender grass is sweetest to the cattle, when leaning on his smooth olive wand Damon thus began:
Rise, Lucifer, and usher in the sky, the genial sky, while I, deluded by a bridegroom’s unworthy passion for my Nisa, make my complaint, and turning myself to the gods, little as their witness has stood me in stead, address them nevertheless, a dying man, at this very last hour. Take up with me, my pipe, the song of Maenalus.
Maenalus it is whose forests are ever tuneful, and his pines ever vocal; he is ever listening to the loves of shepherds, and to Pan, the first who would not have the reeds left unemployed. Take up with me, my pipe, the song of Maenalus.
Mopsus has Nisa given him; what may not we lovers expect to see? Matches will be made by this between griffins and horses, and in the age to come hounds will accompany timid does to their draught. Mopsus, cut fresh brands for to-night; it is to you they are bringing home a wife. Fling about nuts as a bridegroom should; it is for you that Hesperus is leaving his rest on Oeta. Take up with me, my pipe, the song of Maenalus.